Stained Glass Painted Church Bench

For the last day of Sunday school, I was trying to come with something unique to do with the kids.  I had seen this cute bench sitting outside a Wal-mart and it was all painted with cute butterflies and flowers and looked as though kids designed it. I was only driving by, so I didn't have time to stop and study it further, but I thought that it would make a great end-of-the-year project for our kids at church to do.  We have a talented congregation and one of our members made a very nice bench. From there I primed and painted the bench.

 I had my handsome husband cut boards about the size of 3x8x1". I primed and painted them with paint too. Just regular white interior/exterior house paint.

Then at church, I had the kids decoupage pieces of colorful tissue paper onto their boards. They cut out their shapes first to make sure they fit, then they painted (with cheap foam brushes) Mod Podge over the boards and put their tissue paper shapes on top. Then painted another coat of Mod Podge over it again.

Using a blow dryer to quicken the drying process, the kids then painted over the lines where the different colors overlapped or lined up next to each other. Similar to stained glass windows. We used regular acrylic black paint and cosmetic (pointed-tip) Q-tips to paint on the lines. Easy and cheap and super simple to clean up. I don't have a photo of them painting the lines but you can see how it looked as we set them out to dry in the sun.

One of the kids had outlined her board in black and I liked that look. It helped define the separate boards from each other...so I secretly painted each of the boards edges so they would all look consistent with each other. Then I painted a few coats of Clear Painters Touch Indoor/Outdoor paint by Rust-OLeum over them to help seal out any water. I know these won't last forever, but it will be fun to make new boards next year with a new design on each. I also had each child put their initials on top so that they could easily recognize their work of art!

Then my husband helped screw the boards onto the back support of the bench and viola! It looks very nice and welcoming sitting by the doors of our church.